Johannes Reck sold secondary equity during GetYourGuide's 2019 SoftBank round
Johannes Reck · GetYourGuide CEO & Founder, Johannes Reck: The Wild Story Raising $450M From Masa and Softbank · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Jun 23, 2025 · at 54:07
Johannes Reck is the Founder and CEO of GetYourGuide. He reflects on his decision to sell personal shares in 2019 to provide financial liquidity before the pandemic.
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“I did sell secondaries, thankfully in 2019 as part of the soft bank round which actually was very helpful.”
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More from Johannes Reck
Johannes Reck calls Peter Thiel's critique of European founder ambition "BS"
“I think it's bullshit to be honest when people say European entrepreneurs don't work as hard, are not as ambitious. You know, I've heard Peter Thiel and like others say that, but I think that's BS to be honest.”
US VCs Refused to Fund GetYourGuide Unless They Relocated to America
“For the people that I met in the U S most people said, you know, move over here or we're not going to give you funding.”
Reck: Masayoshi Son is a skilled financial investor
“So I was surprised because, you know, you have these stories of Masa that he's just this crazy person, but he's actually a really good financial investor as well. So don't know, don't be kidded by like all of the headlines. He knows what he's doing.”
Investors urged Johannes Reck to lay off GetYourGuide's entire staff during COVID
“The bad thing was I had a lot of investors who basically called me up and said, you have to lay off the entire company immediately to save all of the dollars you have on the balance sheet.”
Johannes Reck says hiring scale executive product talent in Europe is impossible
“If I want to hire, let's say the next chief product officer, At Get Your Guide, it's almost impossible to do that in Europe and need to go to Silicon Valley because the density of people who have done that scale have served tens of millions of customers a year…”